Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Instructor Guide
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Table of Contents As your course start date draws near, you probably have a few questions about what needs to be done in the simulation prior to starting your course. This guide will walk you through what you need to do to prepare for your course. Section 1 should be completed before you start playing the simulation in class, Section 2 goes over how to use the simulation in class, and Section 3 has additional resources.
Table of Contents
Creating Your First Course
Adding Students to Your Course
Configuring Your Course Settings
Sample Syllabus & Scheduling Syllabus Learning Objectives and Scheduling Course Management Using the Team Feature
How do I create, assign, and modify teams in my new course? Important things to know about the team feature:
Grading the Simulation Special Note Reports Student Work
Introducing the Simulation in Class Checklist Organize Teams
Mimic Video Scenario
Creating a Demo Course for Yourself Creating a Demo
Answering Students Questions & Tips for the Simulation Pay Per Click Advertising Tips
Better Keyword Research/Bid Strategies Relevancy Pay Per Click Dashboard
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Email Campaign Tips Shopping Ads Tips
Product Groups & Bid Strategy Negative Keywords Insights
Frequently Asked Questions How do I set round deadlines? How Much does Mimic Pro cost? What is the ISBN for the simulation? And how does my bookstore order access codes?
Creating Your First Course 1. Go to www.stukent.com and click on “Login” in the top right. You can also go to
home.stukent.com to be taken directly to the login page. 2. Log in with your email and password. If you do not know your login credentials, you
can try requesting a password reset email using the “Don’t remember your password” link on the login page. If you do not receive that email, send an email to [email protected] and our support team will make sure you can get in.
3. When you log in, you will see a screen similar to the one below. From here, click on the “+ Add Course” button.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
4. Put in your course details (Course name, start date, Payment type) and click “Next
Step.”
NOTE: Selecting Student Paid and Bookstore/Access Codes will give students the same “Pay Here” message where they can either enter in their credit card information to make the payment directly, or enter in the access code that they were given by their bookstore. Selecting Program Paid will not give the students a Pay Here button as we will need to go in and activate the course from the back end once payment from your school is received. 5. If you are only using Mimic Pro, then navigate to the Simulations tab and “Add”
Mimic Pro. If you are using Mimic Pro with our Digital Marketing Essentials textbook, then go to the “Bundles” tab and add the appropriate bundle.
6. When you have added the simulation or bundle to your course, double-check that all the products are correct over on the right-hand side of the screen. When you have verified you have everything you need, select “Save and Continue” at the bottom. Special Note: Whatever products you select cannot be changed on your end after you click “Save and Continue.” If you change your mind on what products you want to use, then you will need to reach out to [email protected] to change it, or create a new course.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Adding Students to Your Course Once you complete the 6-step course creation process above, you will need to go to the “Students” tab at the top of the screen. There are a couple of options for ways you can add students to your course. Note that you do not have to add your students right away. You can wait and do it when it is most appropriate.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Option 1 – Use the “Course Invite Link.”
Copy the “Course Invite Link” and share it with your students. The link takes them to your course’s registration page.
Option 2 – Send your students an email invite with a clickable link.
You can copy and paste your students’ emails into our system and they will receive an email invitation to play the simulation.
Both of these ways will take these students to the page to pay for the material. Each student must register for your course and pay or use an access code they received from the bookstore.
Configuring Your Course Settings Before your students will be able to get in and start the simulation, you will need to complete some course configuration settings. To configure the settings of the simulation (how many rounds you want your students to play, if you want to use teams, anonymous reporting on the scoreboard, etc.), go to the “Products tab from the top navigation menu and then click on the “Go to Admin” button.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
From here you are automatically taken to the “Settings” page for your simulation. You need to select how many rounds you would like your students to play. You can select any number of rounds up to 10. For your reference, it takes about 1 to 3 hours to complete each round in the simulation.
Sample Syllabus & Scheduling Syllabus For your convenience, a sample syllabus has been created to coordinate your class with the Digital Marketing Essentials textbook and Mimic Pro Simulation. The syllabus can be found in your instructor resources inside the Digital Marketing Essentials textbook. Once you log into Edify (our textbook platform) you will see a table of contents on the left-hand side of the page. The Syllabus can be found in the Title Page Section at the top of the Table of Contents, and again within the Instructor Resources Section. (See screenshots below).
If you are having trouble finding the Sample Syllabus, please reach out to [email protected] and our support team will help make sure you get access to it. Even if you are not using the Digital Marketing Essentials textbook, you can still use this syllabus to help guide you in how to integrate the simulation into your own syllabus.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Learning Objectives and Scheduling Below is a list of the objectives for each round in the simulation. Review this list with your syllabus to plan and schedule when you want to complete each round. You can also use this list to determine how many rounds you want to play.
Round 1: Start the first round during Chapter 6 of the textbook. This will give students a solid background in the basic concepts of the simulation before they jump into the application. 1.1: Review Scenario 1.2: Product Review 1.3: Research Keywords 1.4: SEO & Website Review 1.5: Create 1 Ad Campaign 1.6: Create 1 Email Campaign
Note for teams: Each student will complete the first round individually. Once they have finished the first round, they will be taken to a voting page where they will vote on a teammates results that they want to move forward with. From here, the team members will all be working on the same simulation.
Round 2: Continue the simulation within Chapter 6. 2.1: – Create at least 3 landing pages 2.2: – Create one NEW ad campaign
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
2.3: – Create at least 3 NEW ad groups within their new campaign. 2.4: – Write at least one ad per ad group.
Note for teams: We have seen effective teamwork in the simulation when each teammate is the product marketing manager in charge of one landing page, one ad group, and one ad associated with a specific product.
Round 3: Start in Chapter 7 3.1: Review scoreboard results from round 2 3.2: Review campaign performance from round 2 3.3: Analyze products and pricing data and select 2 new products to sell 3.4: Create landing pages for the 2 new products 3.5: Optimize bids 3.6: Review and adjust ads 3.7: Do keyword research 3.8: Create at least 2 new ad groups 3.9: Write at least 1 ad per ad group
Round 4: Continue in Chapter 7
4.1: Review scoreboard results from round 3 4.2: Review campaign performance from round 3 4.3: Review landing page optimization 4.4: Shopping Ads: Create product feed 4.5: Create your first Shopping Campaign 4.6: Create an email marketing campaign
Note for teams: Changes made in one account will also be made in the simulation for other teammates. Only one teammate should be assigned the email campaign in rounds that it is required.
Round 5: Chapter 8. Rounds can go faster if desired now that the students have been given time to familiarize themselves with the platform. 5.1: Review scoreboard results from round 4 5.2: Review campaign performance from round 4 5.3: Review results from email campaign in round 4 5.4: Optimize landing page content 5.5: Optimize bids 5.6: Review and adjust ads 5.7: Ad new ads and products 5.8: Create another email campaign
Round 6: Chapter 9. Again, this round should only take a few days
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
6.1: Review email marketing results 6.2: Make necessary tweaks to email marketing campaign
Round 7: Continued in Chapter 9. Repetition follows in the remaining rounds. This gives the opportunity for the students to try their own strategies and make their own adjustments. Encourage them to take risks. Practice makes perfect.
Round 8: Continued in Chapter 9
Round 9: Chapter 10
Round 10: Chapter 12
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Course Management When you are viewing the course in your instructor account, click on the “Go to Admin” button on the Products tab. You will then be taken to the admin page for the Mimic Pro simulation. There will be various tabs on the left-hand side of the page that will allow you to review different things in your course. Let’s briefly review each:
1. Students: This is where you can see your list of students who have registered to the simulation.
2. Teams: If you selected the “Use Teams” feature during your initial course setup, this is where you can create and manage the teams. We will cover this in more detail later.
3. Assistants: You can add an assistant to your course through this tab. Adding an assistant will give them access to the course instructor view we are currently reviewing. (Note: Our Assistant feature is only available in Mimic Pro and is not available in our other simulations or our textbook platform).
4. Reports: You can analyze and monitor your students’ progress from this section. This will be discussed in more detail later.
5. Schedule: You can select dates for each round to start. (Note: these are start dates and not due dates. Due dates will need to be set outside the simulation.)
6. Student Work: This page shows your students’ inputs for each round so you don’t have to sign in as each student to review their work.
7. Course Files: You can upload any course files you would like here. (i.e Additional readings)
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
8. Settings: This is the first page you will be taken to when you go to the admin of the simulation. This is where you will set up teams, how many rounds you want your students to complete, etc… After you have done this initial setup, this page will allow you to edit the number of rounds and if you want reports to be anonymous. You can also input a custom course description that your students will see when they get into the simulation.
9. Guides: This is where you can find the instructor guides as well as the Mimic Pro Student Grader we have created and provided for you if you choose to use it. You can also access the simulation walkthrough video that your students will see when they start.
Using the Team Feature If you are using the Team Feature for Mimic Pro, then this section will go over everything you need to know about how the team feature works.
Important Note: You will need to have your teams finalized in the simulation before your students complete round 1. If you fail to create teams before students finish the first round, then the teams feature is disabled and the students who have moved onto the next round will be in the simulation as individuals.
How do I create, assign, and modify teams in my new course?
You access the teams feature by selecting the “Teams” section in the left-hand sidebar of your Mimic Pro admin.
In the “Teams” section, you can add as many teams as you want by clicking the “ADD TEAM” button. Teams can be named anything so if you want your students to create their own team names you can put them in the system as well.
Your students will appear in a list on the left-hand side. You assign the students by dragging and dropping their names from the list, into the corresponding team you created.
To remove a student from a team, simply drag and drop the name from the team into the “Drag Here to Unassign” box on the left
Important things to know about the team feature:
● Round 1 in Mimic Pro is done individually by each student. Once each player on a team completes Round 1 by themselves they are taken to a page that compares
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
all the team members’ results/strategies. From there they vote on which team member’s strategy is the best. Once everyone on the team votes, the team is advanced to round 2 with the strategy that received the most votes being the strategy that is carried over to the next round. Round 2-10’s decisions are completed as a team.
● Only one member of each team needs to submit each round’s decisions during rounds 2-10. It can be any member of the team, and it can be a different member each round. Once one member submits the round, the simulation will advance the whole team to the next round. It would be beneficial to make sure every team member has their assignment to complete in the simulation and one team member each round also has the assignment to run the simulation when everyone has completed the round so there is no confusion.
● Students on the same team can all be logged in at the same time. However, when working on the simulation at the same time, they cannot be working on the exact same thing. This means that two students cannot be working on the same email campaign or ad campaign at the same time. Once team member could be editing the ad text, while the other is optimizing the ad bids, but they can’t do the exact same task at the same time or their inputs will be deleted.
Grading the Simulation Opinions vary about how to grade the simulation. For that reason, we have not assigned a grade to your students’ work within the simulation.
The following information gives you a view of all the available student performance data you can use to assign grades. It is up to you on how exactly you would like to grade your students’ performance.
Special Note Stukent professors that have used Mimic have shared their different approaches and rubrics for grading the simulation on our Digital Marketing Forum. Be sure to go to forum.stukent.com to check these out. We also have provided our Mimic Pro student grader as an additional resource. You can download the grader under the “Guides” section of the simulation. The grader is a tool that you can use to copy and paste your students results in and it will automatically generate a grade.
There are two sections within the simulation that can help you with grading. The “Reports” section and the “Student Work” section. Each section’s functionality is explained below. Note that you won’t see any data under these sections until at least one student has finished the first round.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Reports When you first click on the “Reports” section you are taken to the page below. Let’s review what each tab on this page does.
Student List: This tab lists all your students’ names and teams participating in your simulation course. If you click on a student’s name or team name, then it will take you to the Student Summary page.
Student Rank: This tab ranks your students from 1st to last in all the KPI’s like revenue, profits, ROI, or reach. You can filter these ranks by round or do a cumulative ranking.
Student Summary: This tab gives you the KPI’s for a specific student or team. It also compares these KPI’s to the class average. You can filter this information by each round.
Export: From this tab you can export a variety of different reports into excel. This is where you will export the KPI report to use in the Mimic Pro Student Grader.
Student Work Beneath the Reports section is the Student Work section. This is where you can see all you students’ specific inputs for each round. The information is displayed the same way
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
students would see it in the simulation. Select which student and round you want to view the work for by using the filters in the top right corner.
Introducing the Simulation in Class It’s time for you to now introduce the world’s best digital marketing simulation to your students!
Checklist ● At least a week before the first day of class, or the first day that you want to
introduce the simulation, you will need to have done the following. ● Create a Mimic Pro course in our system. If you have not done this, follow the
steps outlined in this guide under the Course Creation section. ● Start the student registration process by adding students to your course. Refer to
the Student Registration section if you are unsure if you have done this. If anyone in your class has any issues registering, direct them to our customer support team. The support team can be reached at [email protected] and by phone at +1 (855) 788-5368.
Organize Teams If you are using the team feature, you will need to decide who will be on whose team (or have the students pick teams themselves). Then you will need to assign
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
them to the correct team from your instructor team view. See the Teams section in this guide if you have any questions.
Mimic Video As soon as you enter the simulation, you will be taken to a page with the walkthrough video. You can show this in class or have your students watch it in their own time.
Scenario Paint a clear picture to your students of what the simulation is about. Explain that they will be taking over the digital marketing efforts for a camera retailer called Kent’s Camera Castle. All the info about the scenario is located in the simulation itself. It would be a good idea to log into a student account and pull up the scenario page to review with the class. To access this scenario page, log into any student’s account and click on the “Get Started” button under the video. Then the screen below will appear.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Creating a Demo Course for Yourself It is extremely helpful as an instructor if you play the simulation as if you were a student. This helps you familiarize yourself with exactly what your students will be doing and can assist your students more directly when they go through it. This can take as little or as much time as you want. Follow the steps below to set up a demo course and play through the simulation as if you were a student.
Creating a Demo 1. Go to home.stukent.com 2. Log in with the email and password you used to create your instructor account.
When you log in, you will see a screen similar to the one below. From here, click on the “+ Add Course” button.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
3. Name the course “Demo” or something along those lines and select today’s date
as the starting date. Then click “Next Step.” 4. Navigate to the “Simulations” tab at the top of the screen and then select the
Mimic Pro simulation. 5. When you have added the simulation, click “Save and Continue” on the bottom
right. 6. Make sure you go into the admin of Mimic Pro and click “Save.” You will not need
to change any settings as you will be the only student in the course. 7. Go back to the home screen of the course and go to the “Students” tab at the top.
Click on the “Enroll Yourself as a Student” button at the bottom. You may need to refresh your browser after you have enrolled as a student to make sure it processes the change. Then you can go to your name in the top right corner and switch over to the student view. The simulation has built in instructions on what you need to do. If you get stuck, shoot an email to [email protected] and we will help you out!
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Answering Students Questions & Tips for the Simulation Students are going to have questions. You will find that a lot of students will come to you for advice on what they can do better. You can probably already field a lot of these questions without our help, however, here are a few gameplay tips that students often struggle with.
Pay Per Click Advertising Tips 1. Better Keyword Research/Bid Strategies
You can never overestimate the importance of keyword research for a PPC ad campaign. Having the right keywords is critical to success. So, how do you perform good keyword research? Here are a few suggestions to consider while researching keywords.
a. Put yourself in the searcher’s shoes and think about what the searcher’s intent is when they use that keyword. Then categorize the keywords you are considering using into three main groups: Buyers, Researchers, and Browsers.
b. If the goal of your campaign is to get conversions, which it should be in this simulation, then the keywords that are listed under the Buyer’s group are more likely to convert than the keywords listed in the other two groups. If the goal of your campaign was to build awareness of your company or product, then keywords under the other two categories would be helpful.
c. Will the searchers find what they are looking for if they click on my ad after searching for that keyword?
d. Bidding strategies: When first starting a campaign, it is best to bid around 10% above the suggested of a keyword. Many students will bid below the suggested bid in an effort to save costs. They may be able to get away with this if using lower competition keywords, but for the most part they will not get a good ad position. Note: Also make sure that students do not go too far below or above the suggested bid as both of these will result in significant penalties.
2. Relevancy a. This is a very common problem that students overlook. Their keywords,
ads, and landing page content are not always consistent. Your keywords, ads, and landing pages need to be consistent and relevant to each other. For example, if you are using the keyword “gopro hero” you will want to
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
use that phrase in your ad and in your landing page.
Note: The simulation uses the “Exact Match” keyword matching functionality so even things as minute as spacing can make a big difference. With the GoPro example, if the student writes “GoPro Hero” in their ad and then uses the keywords “go pro hero” and “gopro hero” the second one will be the one that generates the most results because it is more relevant to the exact text in the ad.
You may find that students will use keywords from several brands and link them to an ad that only refers to one brand. This will not perform well in the simulation.
3. Pay Per Click Dashboard a. Every student’s account has a Pay Per Click Dashboard where they will
create their new ad campaigns, ad groups, and ads as well as select their keywords. This dashboard will also let them see the in-depth performance of their previous round campaigns such as the number of impressions, clicks, conversions, etc that each ad campaign, ad group, ad, and even each keyword received. It is important to make sure your students can read this dashboard so that they know where they can change things to make the most improvements.
b. Another part of the Pay Per Click Dashboard is the “Insights” tab. This tab will give your students an easy-to-read look at the performance and what improvements can be made with each ad.
c. Each ad is given an indication of how good the Ad Quality and Page Quality is. You and the students can use this information to quickly see what areas they are underperforming.
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Here is what the colored dots represent:
Black: No data was provided. This will be because the ads were paused or weren’t used by the simulation.
Green: Great Work! You don’t need to improve this item.
Yellow: Some adjustments here may be all that is needed to turn the dot green.
Red: Take some time to make some major improvements to get the most out of your campaigns.
If you click on the text of any of the ads themselves, you will get more detailed information on the performance of each of the keywords in the ad group and their relevance to the ad, page, and how good their bid quality is.
You can see all of this information under the “Student Work” tab in your instructor account to review and give your students feedback on where they need to improve.
Email Campaign Tips Our email algorithm places a large emphasis on subject lines. Students’ email campaigns will not perform well if their subject line appears “spammy” by having excessive punctuation (!!!!, ????, etc.) or all capital letters.
Also, if the content of the actual email is too short or has excessive amounts of spelling and grammar errors, the campaign will not perform well. Vulgar language will also
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
negatively affect results.
Shopping Ads Tips
1. Product Groups & Bid Strategy
When students run a shopping campaign for the first time, they will need to make educated decisions as to how to group their products and what the max CPC should be for each of the groups.
They will gain valuable insights by paying attention to the Historical Avg CPC as they go through the process of subdividing the products into groups. This will give them a look into the historical average CPC for products in a similar group across multiple advertisers.
It’s highly recommended that students organize the products in groups based on their bid strategy, grouping products that are likely to have a similar average CPC in the same product groups.
That being said, students can create multiple sets of product groups. They can do this within the same ad group or by creating multiple ad groups. If students choose to create multiple sets of product groups, they should be very careful and intentional about naming their ad groups and product groups in order to keep track of their work.
Once a product group has been created within an ad group, students will be able to pause specific product groups within the ad group.
2. Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are not required but can be added at the ad group level in order to prevent shopping ads from showing up for terms with lower purchase intent and that are less likely to generate a conversion.
If students decide to take advantage of using negative keywords in round 4, they will have to apply critical thinking skills as they choose negative keywords. Generic, not brand or product specific terms are often added to negative keywords to avoid showing up for search results related to broad product research. As a general rule, the closer a user is to making a purchase decision, the more specific their search terms will be to the product they intend to
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
purchase.
In consequent rounds, students will be able to draw additional conclusions about their max CPC and negative keywords by analyzing their results, which will require navigating to the “Insights” tab within their CPC dashboard.
3. Insights
Shopping ads insights will help students make appropriate changes to optimize their max CPC and negative keywords for their shopping ads ad groups.
Search terms: the searched terms that lead to an impression for the shopping ad product being reviewed
Search terms could help students get ideas for which keywords they could target in their search ads.
Suggested bid: calculated by taking into account the cost per click (CPC) that advertisers are paying for the keyword
The amount is only a forecast, and a student’s actual CPC may vary.
Your bid: the Max CPC the student set for the ad group
Bid quality: looks at how competitive the ad group bid was for that particular keyword
Underbidding can, but not always, lead to being outbid by competitors.
Ad relevance: evaluates how relevant a term is to the shopping ad
Students should review this data to help them determine if a particular term should be included in the list of negative keywords for the ad group.
Impressions: the total number of times the shopping ad showed up for that particular search term.
Clicks: the number of times a particular term lead to a click on the shopping ad
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
Frequently Asked Questions How do I set round deadlines? Round deadlines cannot be set in the simulation. The reason is because the previous round needs to be completed before it can generate the data for them to start the next round. So, if a student doesn’t complete the simulation by the deadline you have set for them, they will still need to go in and finish it before they can move onto the next round.
You can set start dates in the simulation to prevent your students from moving too far in the simulation too early. You can set the round start dates by going to the Mimic Pro Admin and selecting the “Schedule” tab.
How Much does Mimic Pro cost? Mimic Pro costs $59.99 per student. If you are using the Digital Marketing Essentials textbook as well (which comes at an individual price of $79.99), a $10 bundle discount will be applied to each product for a total of $119.99.
What is the ISBN for the simulation? And how does my bookstore order access codes? The ISBN information for the product individually and bundled with the textbook can be found below.
Please advise your bookstore to send their PO to [email protected]. Our support team will respond with an electronic that can be paid directly and then we will get access codes for the materials sent over to them.
Title: Mimic Pro Simulation ISBN: 978-0-9967900-3-1 Publisher: Stukent Price USD$: 59.99 Title: Digital Marketing Essentials/Mimic Pro Bundle ISBN: 978-0-9996302-0-4 Author: Jeff Larson and Stuart Draper Publisher: Stukent Price: $119.99
🔝 Jump to Table of Contents
